


The Definition of Insanity

by Defnotmeyo



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-07-13 16:32:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16021733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Defnotmeyo/pseuds/Defnotmeyo
Summary: “You know why love stories have happy endings?” I shake my head.“Because they end too early,” she continues. “They always end right at the kiss. You never have to see all the bullshit that comes later. You know, Life.”― Hank Moody, God Hates Us All





	The Definition of Insanity

Fox Mulder is striking above his league. Way above. Like hitting .450 on a pitcher with 1.6 ERA.

A psychologist. Who believes in aliens. In the theory that his sister was abducted by said aliens.

A fucking conspiracy theorist in fact.

Should not be finding it this easy to bond with a forensic pathologist. A woman of hard science.

Never.

But over really shitty imitation Mexican food at an airport bar in Oakland, California, he manages to catch her eye after she bursts out in annoyance at her food: “I… fucking,” his eyebrows raise at the profanity, “hate this cilantro shit. They put it in everything out here!”

Mulder’s afraid she’d shoot the taco apart if she had a gun.

“I mean… I hate it too,” he tries to be smooth. “You think they sell it in reticula as a currency to expel the human race?” He fails.

“What?”

Never easily discouraged, he shrugs.

“I’m just saying. A beautiful woman at a bar in Oakland International eating imitation taco truck food has a reason to be here, and that reason might be aliens lured her over threat of her life.”

She snorts. “And who is the man supposing this theory on a said California afternoon?”

“Mulder,” he grins. Lopsided. “Fox Mulder. My brother and I are writers… but he sold out, wrote a script, and now his shitty movie is premiering in L.A. tomorrow. Hence instead of the much-preferred East Coast, I’ve landed in this hellstate and rather than immediately subvert myself to L.A. faketocrity, I’ve subsumed this bar in Oakland. Which you were rude enough to crash.”

She grins then and shakes his offered hand. “Dana Scully. And I knew you looked familiar; I’ve seen your face in enough bookstores now. Twins?”

He shrugs. “Fraternal. Unfortunately. And not me, fortunately. My brother’s a good enough guy but I’m anything but Hollywood. Look,” he slides off his bar stool after tossing cash down, “Can I take you to a taco joint without cilantro?”

“You know a lot of taco joints in this airport?”

Mulder grins, ducking his head and rubbing the back of his neck. “Ah, that’s the uh, that’s the catch.” He decides, fuck it. He’s going to ask her. Maybe his luck is finally starting to change. “The taco joint I’m thinking about is in L.A.”

“That’s fairly bold of you Mr. Mulder, asking a woman you just met to hop on an plane with you for tacos.” She leans back and folds her arms, but her little smile and the flick of her eyes down to his lips and back tells him she’s got to be a little impressed. And if he’s lucky, a little turned on.

She has a genuine way about her. And if he’s really lucky he’ll be spending the next seventy-two hours somewhere in vicinity of her rather than any number of the Hollywood floosies he’s sure his brother has lined up for him.

“Cilantro-free tacos. And it’s just Mulder, please. Look,” he waggles his eyebrows, feeling confident for the first time in a long time. “Consider it a free pass to a Hollywood premier. All the champagne and movie stars and-”

“I thought it was a taco truck date, Just Mulder.” She arches her eyebrow and he knows right then that this woman has the absolute power to wreck him.

Apparently, his act must be at least moderately charming. And he lucks out, because she’s already got a plane ticket to L.A. Headed to a some conference he’s never heard of and quickly forgets the second they stumble through his hotel room door, necking like teenagers behind the bleachers at prom.

It’s only later when one of her business cards falls from the pants she picks up, shaking them out as she heads to the bathroom after forty-eight hours of some seriously vigorous sex… 

Only then that his curiosity gets the best of him as usual. 

Only then, as grabs her business card, that he realizes she is THE Dana Scully.

The leading forensics specialist in the FBI.

Fuck.

He covered the serial case she was on the year before. She’s the sole reason they brought that mother fucker to justice.

And Mulder smacks his face. He is in. Way, way over his head. Way out of his league.

Fuck.

—-

“I owe you an apology,” Mulder mumbles from the bed, still shower-damp and with his arm flung over his head in rather dramatic fashion. “A serious one”

Dana’s towel drying her hair and raises a confused eyebrow.

“I don’t know how I didn’t put two and two together, but I was guy that wrote the analysis article on the Monty Props murders.”

“I know,” she turns and heads back into the bathroom. He can hear the sounds of her brushing her teeth, and the domesticity of the moment strikes him. “I knew that the minute I sat down next to you,” she calls out, mumbling around her toothbrush.

The weekend is quickly slipping away from him and God help him, after three days of the Hell City known as Los Angeles, he’ll be ready to leave but Mulder’s not exactly ready to leave her. 

They’ve only just met but Dana Scully has been a breath of steadfast truth and reality in the swirl of Hollywood bullshit he’s put up with leading to his brother’s movie premier. In the roughly fifty hours since he’s known her, he’s learned she can be blunt, which is refreshing in the wake of Diana continuing to jerk him back and forth. 

He quickly quashes that train of thought as he hears Dana spit and rinse, coming back out of the bathroom.

“So, then you also knew-”

“That you were the guy that said the F.B.I. and it’s supposed experts had better take their dicks out of their hands and stop playing grab-ass long enough to see what’s been right in front of them regarding the murders?” She leans against the closet door and Mulder winces, but moves his arm and opens one eye. 

She’s got a cocky little smile and God. He thinks he might be in love.

“Yes, I knew. Thing of it was, Fox… Sorry… Mulder,” he smiles at her concession of his last name, “The psychological analysis you wrote was damn good. And we used it. The Bureau will never admit to it, and as a professional courtesy I’d appreciate you not sharing that with anyone.”

“Of course,” Mulder nods, sitting up and intrigued. No one has ever really listened to him before, much less taken his spookiness seriously enough to put into practice what he has to say. In that way, he’s always been a little jealous of his own brother, who not only got people to sit up and pay attention, but pay enough attention to make himself an incredibly rich man these days.

Dana smiles at him and swishes the towel off her wet hair, lobbing it his way. “You’re good, Mulder. Real good. I can put in a word for you when I’m back in Washington if you want. I’ve got a pipeline straight to the Director and the man does pretty much anything I tell him to.”

I bet he does, Mulder thinks. What he says is, “The Bureau?” He laughs and shakes his head. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation is not going to hire a man who’s been shaking his fist at the sky yelling at anyone who will listen that government is lying to us, the sky is falling, and when it does it’s gonna be the shit storm of all time.”

She saunters up to him. “The government, huh? The Man. Is that what you think, Mulder? That I’m The Man?”

He likes this woman. A lot. He tugs her back with him on the bed and goes about showing her just how much The Man he thinks she is not.

—–

Despite hating everything to do with the state of California, Mulder is dreading the remaining time as the clock ticks down on their impromptu weekend romp. A flight back to D.C… alone… looms, but he’s got a real life with real fish to feed, and a very real divorce settlement clouding his personal life. 

That said. Things might be looking up. 

Scully’s business card hadn’t listed an address, but it had listed a home office number and the zip code is not too far outside of his shitty little apartment’s part of town. 

If he can convince her to let him call, he’s got a very real feeling this might turn into something. 

Mulder’s no idiot. He knows he’s not in the best place to start a relationship (considering he’s not even divorced yet), and if he’s totally honest with himself, Diana, his soon to be ex-wife, has taken a lot of what was good inside of him and twisted it, leaving him bloody and raw. For an Oxford educated psychologist, Fox Mulder has been amazingly good at ending up in fucked-up relationships. 

But Dana is… he smiles softly. The woman is something else. There’s gotta be some dark in there; there is in everyone and he’s notoriously adept at sussing out people’s demons. She just seems so inherently… good. He’s trusted her from the moment he met her and has been confused but heartened by the trust she seems to already place in him.

If someone so inherently good, but also someone who has seen so much bad in the world, trusts him this way then maybe there is still something left in him that’s not rotted out by Diana. By women like Phoebe. By men like his father, who play on his failures and constantly make him feel like shit.

When Dana comes out of the shower this time, dressed in a tight skirt and three-inch fuck-me heels, he feels himself deflate a little. There’s not going to be an encore of his previous performance this time around. 

But she’s also sleek as hell in that little suit of hers and other parts of him are very much not deflated.

Holy shit. The adorable, freckle-faced girl he’s spent the weekend alternately romping in the hay and engaging in the best verbal foreplay of his entire life with is definitely not a girl. Not dressed like this she’s not. 

Dana Scully is a woman who very much means serious business. Who obviously is a professional and will have men’s balls in a vice if they dare to treat her otherwise. Is definitely out of his league.

“Holy shit, you’re hot.” He wants to smack himself. “That… is not what I meant to say.”

“Oh?” she’s facing the vanity, applying lipstick around the very same lips that not an hour ago were wrapped around his-

“I just mean, no wonder the Director of the damn F.B.I. does whatever the fuck you tell him to. You’re not a California dime baby, you’re a damn East Coast power suit 15. I’d listen to you, too.”

Dana (and in his mind, this woman isn’t Dana. Not really. This is Scully, medical doctor and leading expert in her field.) turns to face him and that damn eyebrow that already drives him nuts is spiked to max potential. “Are you insinuating the Director, or any man at the F.B.I. does anything for me because of the way I look and not the fact that I’m the leading forensic expert in the United States?”

Cowed, he scoots back on the bed, “Absolutely not.” 

She grins at him again. “I had you.”

“You have got to stop fucking with me like that, woman. My dad nearly died of a heart attack, you know. I’m not sure my ticker can take it.”

“You’ve been pretty athletic all weekend, Mulder. I think you’ll be fine. C’mon, walk me down to the lobby. I’ve got a flight back in an hour.”

Things start to get a little awkward in the elevator. The goodbye is one of the things Mulder is usually pretty good at fucking up. 

In the lobby, they stand and face each other, and he lets himself lean into her one more time, brushing over her lips softly, watching as she closes her eyes. Lets himself hope to his own Pagan gods that it’s not the last time he gets to do this. Sees the look in her eyes when he pulls back that says there’s a pretty good chance that it’s not.

“Heeeeey!” a horrifyingly familiar voice rings through the hotel lobby, “If it’s not the other half of the prodigious and yet farce of a fucking family known as the Moody-Mulder conglomerate. Now I know why you didn’t end up at the bar with me last night, you prick, though I gotta say, out of either one of us to end up hip deep in pussy before the ink on our respective divorces is dry, it wasn’t you Fox.”

Mulder, stunned by this impossibly terrible twist of fate, stares over Dana’s head and sees possibly the worst person that could have appeared at that moment. Squints his eyes shut briefly, clenching his jaw and wishing for a schism in time that lets him travel back five minutes. 

Mulder has always been notoriously unlucky. 

He opens his eyes. And is still looking right back at himself. Shaggier. Obviously, a little whiskey-soaked. But. Himself.

He clears his throat. “Uh, Dana… this is my brother.”

“Henry James Moody, my lady, but there’s no need for formality if you’re already swapping dog water with my little brother-” 

“Ugh,” Mulder closes his eyes again and palms his face. This cannot be happening.

“You can call me Hank.” Mulder’s carbon copy introduces himself to Dana as she stares at Mulder with her jaw agape and limply shakes Hank’s hand without turning towards him. 

Oblivious, Hank looks Mulder’s way with a shit-eating grin on his face. “Headed back to the bar, you both should come back and let me buy you a round. I’ll be back over there in five minutes, which Dana, for your sake, I hope isn’t still Fox’s land speed record in the sack.” Hank winks and moves passed them, stopping every ten feet to schmooze with half the leggy brunettes along the way.

“That was-” Mulder starts, but Dana cuts him off.

“Married. You’re married.” She closes her eyes with a groan. “Of course,” she mutters, seemingly talking to herself more than him.

“Dana, I’m getting a divorce. I would have said something but there wasn’t ever really time-”

“Oh, there was time, Mulder,” she turns on a heel and starts walking and damn she can really move in those things. “Maybe between fucks five or six there was a little time to mention that my next confessional is going to be a doosie. Or maybe you could have mentioned it in the shower. Or hell, when I agreed like an idiot to fly to Los Angeles with a man I didn’t know.”

“It wasn’t that.” 

He’s followed her out of the hotel and into the lobby now as she heads to the valet for a cab. Their bags have already been brought down but he’s got a strong feeling they won’t be taking the same ride to the airport.

“It wasn’t what?” she turns on him as the driver loads her suitcase and waits uncomfortably by the back door for her to get in.

“Fucking. It wasn’t fucking. Look Dana, I don’t know what that was, but it wasn’t fucking.”

“No, it wasn’t. It was insanity,” she growls his way. “You’re a smart guy, Mulder. What’s the definition of insanity?”

He stays quiet, chewing his lip, and looks away.

Defeated by his silence, she nods. “Right. Look. When you’re back in D.C.,” she takes a breath and appears to gather herself, moving to grab his hand and he’s struck once again by just how unbelievably kind this woman is, “I meant it. I’ll put in a word for you with the Director if you’re looking to make a career shift. That profile… you can help people, Mulder. But whatever this was for either of us, this stays in L.A.”

Still worrying his lip, Mulder nods. Everything he’s managed to say in the past three minutes has been a disaster, and he decides she’s right. It’s insane to expect different results from the same actions. So, he does something he’s been notoriously bad at doing.

He squeezes her hand once, and then he lets her go.

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this came off a prompt from Tumblr asking for Scully to be a pretty famous doctor and/or researcher, and Mulder, who frequently thinks he's unworthy, has trouble admitting his feelings for her because he's afraid she might not reciprocate. Obviously I chose not to tag Californication in the fandoms line because I wanted to avoid OBVIOUSLY spoiling the big reveal though I have a feeling anyone familiar with both shows is going to guess pretty early on who the twin brother is. It'll be tagged going forth after the initial run of this fic.


End file.
